Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. ‘SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS’-
INTERVIEWS AND ENCOUNTERS
What I brought to the research was a discovery of my own voice in preparation for listening
to the voices of others (Chase 2005), seen as a central feature of hermeneutic listening
(Kimball and Garrison 1996). My personal narrative began in a reflexive autobiography,
examining the constituents of a psychodynamic theology (Ross 1997). This developed into
further reflection on the experience of two people in the context of a therapeutic
relationship, searching for a depth of encounter that Buber defines as I-Thou (Ross 1999). 526
However the quality of I-Thou encounter eludes precise definition of being, stretching
language to its limits and beyond, as found in mystical events (Ross 2008). This is held in
tension with the difficulty of capturing such rich encounters and requires utilizing a
bricolage of qualitative research methods that captures the essence of the encounter.
So the research started with a reflexive account of my personal narrative, in order to make
explicit often-implicit ontological foundations, as these influence the way research findings
are interpreted. The subject area of research - religion, spirituality and the sacred in
contemporary psychoanalysis - was then identified using descriptive categories, locating the
research within wider philosophical and theoretical discourses. Frosh and Elliot reviewed
psychoanalytic history and theory, through the lens of critical developments that shaped late
twentieth century thought, including feminism, sexual identity and orientation, and
postmodernism (Frosh 1999, 2010; Elliott 2004). Such a task still required focusing on the
recovery of religious perspectives and the emergence of spirituality within contemporary
526 See a brief discussion of Buber’s I-Thou in chapter one.
324